This Week's Credit Card Offers

Although I haven't posted since February, please play along and pretend it was just last week, OK?

Fine new credit card offers this week:

The Citi Diamond Preferred Card is offering me 0% on purchases and balance transfers until July of 2008 plus a 9.99% fixed APR after that. That's way better than what they offer online, where you'll see they're only giving the 0% on balance transfers and NOT purchases, and the ongoing rate is 12.74% at best. Plus there's the reward program. For me, though, I'd be more likely to take the online deal because you get 6,000 of those ThankYou points free and the mail offer is not giving me that. I don't need 0% anything, and I don't carry balances, but I do like my points, yes I do.

Next up is a Wells Fargo Visa Business Platinum card. Wellsy is offering me 0% on purchases for 12 months, interest rate as low as the prime rate + 4% (which would thus equal 12.25% assuming I qualified for their best rate), and "up to" 2% cash back on purchases, with the cash reward credited automatically to my account. I got excited for a moment and thought it was a straight 2%, but reading the fine print I see it's 0.5% on the first $350 of purchases, 1% on the next $1,650 and then 2% after hitting $2000. And that's per month, not per year. So you really have to be using that card to hit the 2%. Ah, Wellsy, your fine print stinks. That's the ultimate come on---2% my butt.

All right. Now we have the American Express Rewards Plus Gold Card, which has come in some fancy golf leaf enveloping. This is one of Amex's charge cards, which comes with an annual fee of $150, although they'll waive it for the first year. It's not a bad card if you're a traveler---2 points per dollar on airline and hotel purchases for the first year and 1.5 points per dollar after that. It also promises access to Gold Card Events, "giving you the ability to purchase some of the most sought-after tickets" to concerts and sports, "often before they're made available to the public." I wish I knew someone who had this card so they could tell me just how often they get some kind of VIP status to get good tickets. I'm skeptical, but that might draw me in if I really believed I could get good tickets to a U2 show or something. For now, however, it goes n the circular file.

I actually have a stack of 40 other offers I've received since I last posted, but I don't feel like opening them all. I'm wiping the slate clean and will only report on new mailings in the future.

A commenter asked why I never seem to talk about Chase credit card offers. The reason is that I'm already up to my eyeballs in Chase cards; it just so happens that Chase has had a lot of cards that I've wanted in the last few years, and so they really don't bug me with new offers very often. Maybe I'll close down some of those accounts that I don't use much so I can get more mail from Chase. Nah.